America's top companies keep talking about AI – but can't explain the upsides

https://www.ft.com/content/e93e56df-dd9b-40c1-b77a-dba1ca01e473

48•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago

Comments

sydbarrett74•1h ago

AI provides cover to lay people off, or else commit constructive dismissal.

zippyman55•1h ago

Agreed! The people who did not work hard but were kept employed ala “bullshit work” are being removed.

bravetraveler•55m ago

Eh, I have plenty of "bullshit work". Building clusters six servers at a time... that last the order of weeks, appeasing "stakeholders" that are closer to steaks

Whole lot of empty movement and minds behind these 'investments'. FTE that amounts to contracted, disposed, labor to support The Hype.

lotsofpulp•48m ago

Constructive dismissal and layoffs are mutually exclusive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

>In employment law, constructive dismissal occurs when an employee resigns due to the employer creating a hostile work environment.

No employee is resigning when an employer tells the employee they are terminated due to AI replacing them.

heavyset_go•43m ago

AI is what you tell the board/investors is the reason for layoffs and attrition.

Layoffs and attrition happen for reasons that are not positive, AI provides a positive spin.

lmm•17m ago

> No employee is resigning when an employer tells the employee they are terminated due to AI replacing them.

No, but some are resigning when they're told their bonus is being cut because they didn't use enough AI.

discordance•57m ago

This comes to mind: "MIT Media Lab/Project NANDA released a new report that found that 95% of investments in gen AI have produced zero returns" [0]

Enterprise is way too cozy with the big cloud providers, who bought into it and sold it on so heavily.

0: https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generat...

bawolff•49m ago

If the theory is that 1% will be a unicorns that will make you a trillionaire, i think investors would be ok with that.

The real question is do those unicorns exist or is it all worthless.

orionblastar•41m ago

Have to pay the power bill for the data centers for GAI. Might not be profitable.

thenaturalist•5m ago

Fun fact, the report was/ is so controversial, that the link to the NANDA paper linked in fortune has been put behind a Google Form you now need to complete prior to being able to access it.

CyberMacGyver•41m ago

Our new CTO was remarking that our engineering teams AI spend is too low. I believe we have already committed a lot of money but only using 5% of the subscription.

This is likely why there is a lot of push from the top. They have already committed the money now having to justify it.

mgh2•26m ago

https://archive.is/133z6

groby_b•22m ago

Simple fact: AI is extremely powerful, in the hands of experts who invested time in deeply understanding it, and in understanding how to actually use it well. Who are then willing to commit more time to build an actually sustainable solution.

Alas, many members of the C suite do not exactly fit that description. They just have typed in a prompt or three, marveled that a computer can reply, and fantasize that it's basically a human replacement.

There are going to be a lot of (figurative, incorporated) dead bodies on the floor. But there will also be a few winners who actually understood what they were doing, and the wins will be massive. Same as it was post dot-com.

stretchwithme•9m ago

AI is useful to people who read and understand the answers and who would have eventually come up with a similar result on their own.

They have judgement. They can improve what was generated. They can fix a result when it falls short of the objective.

And they know when to give up on trying to get AI to understand. When rephrasing won't improve next word prediction. Which happens when the situation is complex.

SchemaLoad•7m ago

Something I've noticed is LLMs seem to be able to answer questions on everything, in quite a lot of detail. But I can't seem to get them to actually do anything useful, you basically have to hand hold them the entire way to the point they don't really add value. I'm sure there is plenty of research in to this, but there does seem to be a big difference between being able to answer questions, and actual intelligence.

For example I have some product ideas in my head for things to 3D print, but I don't know enough about design to come up with the exact mechanisms and hinges for it. I've tried the chatbots but none of them can really tell me anything useful. But once I already know the answer, they can list all kinds of details and know all about the specific mechanisms. But are completely unable to suggest them to me when I don't mention them by name in the prompt.

01100011•8m ago

AI isn't about what you are able to do with it. AI is about the fear of what your competitors can do with it.

I said a couple years ago that the big companies would have trouble monetizing it, but they'd still be forced to spend for fear of becoming obsolete.